The Magic of Theme

Veronica had me LOL-ing with her quips about themes sounding like Morgan Freeman. Talia had me hmmm-ing in thinking about how I use theme even when I present technical data in an engineering forum.  Katherine had me nodding about how I never know what my themes are until long after the novel is written.

But one…ummm, theme (if you will) of all posts stuck out: the themes of their novels presented themselves AFTER the story was on paper.

They also did a good job of explaining that themes are the concepts which permeate every word of a story. It’s Veronica’s “My story dispels the myth of the existence of free will.” Or Talia’s “You get to decide what kind of person you’ll be.” It’s a single sentence (or, jeez, a single WORD) that sums up your entire manuscript.

And we're not supposed to plan that out?

*The plotter in me shrieks*

More troubling to my analytical side: Most of the time, a critique partner has pointed my themes out to me. Sometimes it’s even a character that’s come right out and stated them. Of course, I give a sly smile, but inside I’m freaking. How did I not realize that?! I hadn’t gone out to write a story about society being held together by our humanity, except I did. It appeared like magic…sure, it may not have saturated every word, but it was on every page.

Shoot, once I even had a great idea for a theme, but nothing I did kept the story on it. It sounded forced. In the end, I dropped it and let the true theme reveal itself at its own pace.

And this brings me to my ultimate dilemma with theme: The planner in me is supposed to write 60-100k words, each of them in support of a theme that I can’t know until I’ve written said words.

Can you see me short circuiting right now??

How can I make theme fit into my planning spreadsheets and outlines? How can I plot my theme?

Simple: I can’t.

The plotter in me will never be able to go into a project truly knowing the themes…he'll just be surprised when the magic happens.